A Mythos Grimmly

by Morgan Griffith

  Had the circumstances been different, Baird would have marveled at what surrounded them, but the stranger’s gait, and piercing eyes, and the looming feeling of dread that gnawed at him, all cast a pallor over the beauty around him. Where one would see it as peaceful and serene, Baird saw it as a false and dangerous thing. It was beautiful yes, but it was a snare, a lure that would surely lead him to his death if he did not remain watchful.

  After several hours, the sunlight began to fail and Gelbe turned to him, the mad spark in his eyes lessened now, his expression weary.

  “Night will be upon us soon. We will make camp, for we have traveled enough for this day.”

  Some distance from where they were standing, way up on a rise and reaching above the trees, Baird could see a large structure made of stone, fallen into disrepair. It was a like unto a watch tower or castle turret, tall and round with a pointed roof of crumbling slate. Its walls and great wooden doors were covered with vines and festooned with mold and moss.

  “Should we not perhaps seek shelter from the chill of the night air in yon –”

  Gelbe stepped up to him, a long finger upon his lips and hushing the young soldier into silence.

  “Nay. Though tis a passing fair dwelling, aged though it may be, best we not venture too close or seek to enter inside.”

  The tall stranger’s voice was calm and sure, but Baird saw something else in his eyes, a warning, and yes, maybe fear as well.

  “It would be best we seek it out when the sun is new born or high in the sky. For by the time we were to reach it, darkness would be all around, and tonight shall be a moonless one. Approaching yon dwelling in the dark would be folly.”

  “What is it do you think?”

  Baird saw a flurry of emotions run across the haggard and lined face of his companion, as though he wanted to say a great many things, but as yet did not want to share them.

  “Most likely it is the den of some witch or necromancer. We should stay well out of it until daylight is once more our ally. Let us rest, we are both footsore and in need of refreshment, for we have walked far this day.”

  The soldier took a last look at the odd tower that stood out on the hill across from them, and then sighed in agreement with the tall woodsman.

  “I think truer words were never spoken,” Baird replied.

  They found a suitable spot, a flat area of ground beside a massive boulder, and set about making clearing it for the purpose of laying out their bedrolls and making a fire. Soon, the warm flames were crackling and Gelbe had put out a pot of stew to boil, using dried meats and herbs he had also kept in his pack.

  Baird collapsed onto his rough bed with a groan and ripped the boots off his feet, stretching his toes and rubbing out the soreness.

  They passed the time before the meal was ready in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts. Out in the forest, the air was still and quiet, except for the occasional cry of some bird or other. Baird had found it strange that they had neither heard nor seen any sort of forest creature on their trek, but until now had not given it a second thought. Now, knowing that forlorn and forgotten tower was close out there in the dark, he began to believe what Gelbe had suggested, that it was the dwelling of something or someone unnatural. The shape of it had seemed ominous and dire in the blood red light of the dying sun.

  The young soldier shivered and turned his thoughts to other things, most notably his aching and weary feet.

  Soon, the stew was ready and Gelbe served it in wooden bowls from his pack, with rough made tin spoons. It was the best meal Baird had had in days. Savory and pungent he scooped it into his mouth greedily.

  “A curious name, Baird” the tall man said as Baird filled his mouth with another bite. “It means poet does it not? Tell me boy, are you a poet?

  Baird chewed, and then swallowed, surprised that the tall stranger knew the meaning of a name in a foreign tongue.

  “It does, but I am no poet; I have no skill for it,” he said, swallowing. “My mother, gone to the angels seven years past, she named me, I think, that I might escape the family trade. Alas, I was a disappointment to her.”

  Gelbe chewed thoughtfully, looking at the young man, weighing the answer.

  “And what was this family trade, what were you in life, before soldiering?”

  The question gave the infantryman pause. The war and the fighting had been going on for some time and what he was before being handed the gun seemed a lifetime ago.

  “I was… I am a vinter.”

  The stranger regarded him with those penetrating eyes and then nodded.

  “Ah, a son of Dionysus, the drunkard.”

  Baird made to protest, but Gelbe held up a hand, a sly grin upon his lips.

  “I do but jest with ye. It is a good trade.”

  “It was something I took pride in,” Baird beamed.

  “Not the most noble of arts,” Gelbe’s accented words deflated the infantryman somewhat. “But not one that carries any shame. I will brook no poet or actor, for they are frivolous and given to licentiousness. They sell naught but wind and air, which may at first blow hot, but is soon cool and gone once more, worth no more than the fickle clouds that fill the sky. But an honest tradesman? One who tills the earth or draws from it that which eases the hunger, thirst or toil of his fellow man? A farmer, a baker, a tinsmith or shoemaker? That man I hold in some esteem, for they are doing honest work.”

  “I feel it was a worthy trade, and it has some mystery to it as well. My father taught me and his father him, back through my family for seven generations. The making of a good wine is a blend of agriculture and alchemy. It is not just the grape, mind you, that produces a fine wine.”

  “Is it so?” The stranger looked at him, a bemused look upon his features.

  “Oh yes,” Baird exclaimed. “For instance, the wine you so graciously shared with me, it has a most unusual scent, the hint of a flower I cannot place. Do you know what it might be?”

  Gelbe took the wineskin, lifted it to his nose and inhaled, long and deep.

  “You have a keen nose, Baird. That is the aroma of a rare plant in my homeland, the kanak, whose potency is said to bestow virility and vitality.”

  Baird’s eyes widened.

  “Though, why they would add it to liquor, which robs some men of the ability, I cannot say.”

  Gelbe winked at Baird, and then both men shared a hearty laugh.

  “You are a puzzlement to me,” Baird said and Gelbe gave him a questioning look. “You have an air of dire purpose about you, yet you just now have displayed a talent for mirth and gaiety. Tell me Gelbe the tall, what is your tale? What is that has brought here to this strange wood, to meet a poor bedraggled soldier and to share your food and company with? What were you in life, before war? And what, pray tell, is the meaning of your name?”

  The mirth died in Gelbe’s eyes, replaced by an angry fire in his black, flint colored eyes. For a moment the infantryman thought he might plunge the big knife that still hung from his belt through his heart, but the stranger looked away, off into the dark spaces between the trees.

  Gelbe’s voice, when he answered, was rough, guarded

  “My name is but a word. Like yours, it does not define who I am. What was I? My father was a leatherworker and I learned that trade, before life offered me…” He hesitated before finishing, “Another road.”

  The infantryman spooned another mouthful of stew once more, chewing thoughtfully.

  “That explains your boots then, strange as they are.”

  Gelbe grunted, turning his right foot to one side, showing the boots of peculiar leather to the firelight.

  “You think them so?”

  “Indeed. The color, the texture. What beast’s hide were they made from?”

  Gelbe ran his long fingers over the surface of the boots, and the gesture seemed almost one of affection, but the expression on his face was one of loathing.

  “They are unique, are they not?”

  Baird looked at t
hem again.

  The grain was strange to his eye, and did not look like leather at all in the dappled light of the campfire. They had a grayish cast, with a yellow-green tinge of verge or new hay. But perhaps that was just a trick of the light. They looked almost the color of a lake trout.

  “They are most curious. Pray tell me, what manner of beast produces a hide that tans to such a hue?”

  Gelbe’s features took on a strange expression, almost one of nostalgia, but also mixed with revulsion or disgust.

  “T’was a beast, that much is true,” he said in a low tone, “but no beast known to any outside the borders of my homeland. They are our curse, our burden.”

  “What do you mean?” Baird frowned.

  “From the dark days, we have known of them. And have tried, time and again, to drive them from our lands, to eradicate them. This is why I am here, in this forest, I hunt them here, for now they have infected this country as well.”

  Gelbe shifted his position, moving the boots out of the firelight, as if to hide them from Baird’s eyes. Baird looked up to see him looking directly at him.

  “If you continue to follow me, you must understand that I will not waver in this quest. I have sworn to slay them to the very last one. To halt the spread of them, for they are the cause of true Evil in the world.”

  “I do not understand, they are simple beasts are they not?”

  “They are not. They are abominations, a deviant and corrupt race; a culture that worships dark gods and that seeks to unmake the world.”

  Baird did not comprehend at first, but then he felt his gorge rise.

  “You mean to say, that those boots you wear, they are made from the skin of –”

  “They are not men. They are something worse.”

  “Who,” Baird stammered, “who are you?”

  From somewhere deep in the forest there came the cry of some beast, like none that Baird had ever heard before. It was mournful and bone-chilling, the wail of some wounded thing perhaps. The sound chilled Baird’s blood.

  Gelbe was on his feet quickly, his pistol in one hand and the rifle in the other and charged to the edge of the firelight. Baird scrambled to reach his own weapon, gained his feet and followed after him.

  They moved warily through the thick undergrowth. Baird was just about to whisper a question, to ask if the thing that had made that unearthly sound was indeed the creature Gelbe had been hunting, when the stranger halted, so quickly that Baird almost ran into his back.

  “Why have we –” he began, but Gelbe turned on him violently, clamping a hand over his mouth and forcing him back behind one of the bigger trees.

  “Still your tongue, lest we be heard!” the tall man hissed.

  Baird’s eyes were wide with alarm. Gelbe held him fast, the strength of his fingers and arms pinning the young soldier to the tree. Baird felt that if the stranger had wanted to, he could have snapped him in half.

  “Through yon copse, close to the hillside there are stairs carved from the living rock. They lead, no doubt, to that black and evil tower. It is, I know deep in my soul, the very dwelling place of those vile and evil things I have been seeking these long years, Baird the vinter.”

  Baird tried to still the rapid inhale of his breath. The madness in Gelbe’s eyes, the closeness of his voice, the heat pouring off his skin, filled him with a dread so powerful he feared his heart would cease to beat.

  “Calm yourself, you have seen battle, you know the nearness of death; you are a fighting man, are you not?” Gelbe’s bitter tone matched the rankness of his breath. Baird tried to turn his head to the side to keep from gagging. “Be still, and calm your fear, for they are out and about in the dark. It is the time when they show themselves to the world, unafraid in the black and starless night. And if they but catch one whiff of your fear, they will destroy us.”

  Baird’s eyes flicked from right to left, seeing things move in every shadow.

  “Stay here and tremble, winemaker, let this not be your last night on this earth. Run, and live.”

  The tall stranger broke away from him and sprinted for the ancient crumbling stairway and soon disappeared up into the darkness.

  From out in the night, the strange cry echoed again, a sound alien and full of horror.

  Baird, his hands trembling, gripped his rifle tighter and followed Gelbe up the stairs.

  They wound up through the rock, steep and uneven, as though made for one whose legs were abnormal and long. Those steps felt too worn, too smooth to the touch, as if they had been scrubbed and polished by eons of wear and use.

  At the top, Baird stumbled out on a flat open courtyard and saw the tower rising evilly above him. Not far ahead, he saw Gelbe standing staring up at it.

  Baird approached him and whispered, “Who are you, and what are the things you seek in there?”

  Gelbe turned his blazing eyes upon him, and Baird saw the man’s tortured madness in them.

  “I spoke true when I told you I was a traveler, but that is not all I am. I have kept from you the whole of the truth.

  “The battles you have fought, the horror and death you have seen, is because I was the man who crossed into your country with an army of fifty thousand. Not to conquer, not to plunder, not to enslave the world. I do not serve demons, I do not consort with witches, devils or trolls… but out there in the dark, up those stairs and in that ancient and accursed place, dwells the thing I have come to fight.

  “I am the man they call the King in Yellow Tatters, Tatterdemalion, the right arm of the Devil. And I have come to destroy that which seeks to destroy us all.”

  Just then, another of the great beastly wails shattered the night and both men turned to face the tower.

  At the base of the tower, time-worn and covered in vines and rot, the great oaken doors to the structure suddenly burst asunder. Pouring out of them came the stuff of nightmare. Great tendrils of some gargantuan beast, coils of spine covered tentacles, roiled and flailed the air, seeking trees and rocks and anything else to crush and destroy. And in the center, an impossibly huge gaping maw, filled with rows of yellowed, sharp teeth.

  Baird’s mind recoiled, unable to fathom the meaning or scope of what his eyes beheld.

  Gelbe fired first his pistol and then the rifle sending metal slugs into the giant limbs that blindly sought the things that caused them pain.

  The mad king drew the huge hunting knife from his belt, turned and screamed at Baird.

  “You are a soldier, are you not!? See you now the enemy!? See you now the true face of evil? Then fight! Fight! Fight!”

  The man smiled, as if at a secret joke, and then answered the question. “Pizzle. Everyone calls him Pizzle.”

  The poor fellow in question hobbled away, trailing strips of his breeches behind him.

  The smiling man closed his eyes and fingered the trimmed patch of hair at the tip of his chin. “The wind outside is terrible, is it not? Yes, you are correct. There is a tale behind the unusual name. And here we are, fellow travelers seeking shelter. The fire is warm, and the ale is strong, not sour. One might expect a tankard in return for a well-told story.” His teeth shone in the firelight.

  “I am jesting, of course,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on the wooden table. “In truth, you are twice-blessed. I will tell you the tale, and I will keep your cup full.” He glanced at the innkeeper, who nodded in return. “But the account is intricate, and will require your patience. Sit back. Drink. A storm is coming, but we have a roof over our heads.”

  He took a sip from his tankard and sat back. He wore the finery of a nobleman, but his cuffs were soiled and his hair tangled. “To tell the tale of Pizzle, I need first to tell of Donkeyskin.”

  The innkeeper delivered a round of drinks. He was a thick man with a belly like bread pudding. The last vestiges of his hair had been twirled and perched at the top of his head, but when he bent to deliver the ale, the tiny pile spilled forward.

  “Yes, everyone thinks they know about Donkeyskin. Ch
ildren whisper the name to each other. It is all the fashion.” He took another sip of ale. “A wise man might say there’s a kernel of truth in every fable. I will produce that kernel. Indeed, I will produce the entire ear!” He burst out laughing, and then began:

  A fortunate king ruled vast lands and a sturdy castle. He married a beautiful queen who bore him two daughters. And he owned a marvelous donkey. The beast was stronger and smarter than any other animal in the kingdom. And the beast’s droppings were laced with gold, which added greatly to the king’s wealth.

  But the king’s reign would not be without heartache. His queen took ill and died. On her deathbed, the queen extracted a promise that he not remarry unless he found a queen as beautiful as she had been.

  Time passed—a decade and more. The king realized that the only woman fitting to his promise was his eldest daughter. She was a beautiful girl with dark hair, piercing eyes, faint, lovely freckles, and a sensual mouth. He decided they would marry.

  The daughter was distraught. She agreed to the marriage, but with conditions. The king would have to provide a number of stunning gowns, including one that shone as bright as the sun. Another would have to be the color of the sky. A third would have to be the exact color of the moon.

  Finally, the daughter required her father to slay the magic donkey, and deliver the skin. This last requirement left the daughter confident that the marriage would never be consummated.

  Much to her surprise, the king commissioned the creation of the wardrobe and killed the donkey. He delivered the skin, along with the three dresses, demanding that she keep her end of the bargain.